Never before in history have we been saddled with so much personal responsibility for eating right, so much potential blame if we don’t and such an unparalleled deluge of new, complex, and often quite contradictory facts and beliefs, opinions and theories.” Mary Sykes Wylie, 1997.

We would like to commend Catherine Conover for her sensible Dec. 1 article titled “Spotlighting the average woman.” In contrast, a Nov. 19 article titled “Overeating of food is far too overrated: Fruit salad, not fudge,” by Jaquelyn Mitchard greatly concerned us.

First of all, Mitchard did not write that the overeating of food is overrated as the title implied; instead, her first sentence stated that “eating is overrated.” We disagree. We think eating is actually underrated in this society and being thin is overrated. Food is primary in our lives. We eat to survive physically, and we eat for pleasure. Countries go to war over having access to food, and people all over the world are dying or ill from malnourishment. It is only in a country where there is easy access to food that such a flippant attitude could be expressed toward food. Mitchard implies that we would all be healthier if we just lost interest in food as she has.

We feel we could all be healthier if we stopped fearing food. Author Laura Fraser writes, “The fear of fatness affects most Americans of all sizes, lurking behind every bite of food and every glance in the mirror.” Research shows that larger women are often more healthy than thinner counterparts and that the data on the health risk of being overweight is uncertain. Fat people who exercise live as long as thin people who exercise. Lack of physical activity, not weight, does the real damage.

Years of research has resulted in the conclusion that diets do not work. Ninety-five to 98 percent of all weight-loss methods fail within three years. Meanwhile, the commercial weight-loss industry makes $30 billion annually, fanning the flames of self-loathing and anxiety over size. Ironically, starvation dieting (1200-calorie diets included) and deprivation of certain types of food actually greatly influence weight gain and eating disorders. Those in the field of eating problems have found that an “intuitive” or “self-demand” approach to eating is best at meeting nutritional needs. That means you eat when you are hungry and you stop when you are full.

Our bodies need food to function, and we need a variety of foods, which can include sweets and fats (for those with no medical restriction, such as diabetes). The ISU-student dietitians use a system that acknowledges that there are “anytime foods,” “sometimes foods” and “fewtimes foods,” but there are no “bad” foods or “nevertimes foods.” Our bodies are geared to maintain a “set-point weight” that allows for some overindulgence, say for example, during the holidays. The body later will adjust your appetite and metabolism to accommodate the variation in pattern.

People are frustrated with eating because we are coming up with so many rules about food, such as “don’t eat fat,” “watch your cholesterol” and “chocolate has no nutritional value” rather than using our internal cues of hunger, taste and fullness.

As Laura Fraser writes, “our obsession with dieting is a cultural sickness. It induces eating patterns that deprive people of their ability to naturally regulate themselves.” Unfortunately, after eating or starving by the rules for too long, some people lose their ability to feel their internal cues, but those cues can be rediscovered with help.

When we try to override the body’s natural system to maintain a stable weight by either starving or eating past fullness, we end up creating more stress and harm to the body.

Psychologically, when we feel something is off-limits or deprived, we are more likely to binge on that food. Mitchard claims not to feel deprived, yet she has so bought into the dieting culture that she is “always a little hungry.”

She has also restricted her allowable foods to “rice and stuff” such that eating is so boring that she finds smoking preferable over eating. Smoking, by the way, is another method people use to avoid eating, and fear of weight gain is a primary barrier to people quitting smoking, which can be a more significant health risk than weight.

We recognize that some people compulsively eat for metaphorical reasons not related to hunger or nutrition. People eat to celebrate, to feel nurtured, to rebel, to express anger, to escape boredom, to cope with violence and to reduce anxiety. The negative discrimination experienced by large people can further fuel the compulsion to overeat. Body size has become a puritanical, moral issue.

The overall attitude is “that fat people are responsible for their condition and should be punished as a means of social control for being fat,” (J. Sobal, 1995). In one weight-loss commercial, a woman’s dog scolds her for gaining weight.

We all need each other’s support and compassion, not judgment on how we look in our clothing. At Student Counseling Service, we encourage clients to find alternative ways to express and cope with feelings while accepting one’s current body size. We encourage you to enjoy a wide variety of foods, exercise in ways you enjoy and honor your internal cues of hunger and fullness.

Student Counseling Service offers individual counseling and a variety of groups, including a group for compulsive eaters, to meet students’ needs about eating and body-image concerns.

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Brooks Morse, Ph.D. is a counseling psychologist and coordinator of ISU’s Eating Disorders Program. Suzanne Zilber, Ph.D. is a counseling psychologist and an eating-disorder specialist.